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A pen that's grown with me

INTRODUCTION

As a tutor I need to carry a ton of stationery to clients' houses every day. This includes textbooks, paper, a clock, a receipt book, a diary and lots and lots of writing implements. I have a *stuffed* pencil case that goes everywhere with me and it's full of pens, pencils, sharpeners, rubbers etc. I have lots of black and blue pens but I'm forever losing my red pen (essential for marking students' work). Enter the Bic 4-Colour Ball Pen.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

The Bic 4-Colour Ball Pen has been manufactured since the year Dot. Well, perhaps not quite the year Dot, but it feels as if it's been around forever. I remember there being quite a fad for them at one time when I was at school back in the 1980s. I remember teachers using them too.

I purchased my latest Bic 4-Colour pen from Wilkinsons for a pound a couple of weeks ago. The pen came packaged within a cardboard-backed blister pack. The packaging states that the pens are refillable, but, to be honest, at a quid a pop, I'm not too worried about refilling my pens and have never investigated the refill cartridges.

The design of the pen itself doesn't seem to have changed much since I was a child. The pen is made in two halves: the top half of the barrel is moulded white plastic with a built-in clip for securing the pen to papers or books. It comes with four apertures near the top in which are the four colour-coded sliders, each of which engages the corresponding biro cartridge within the pen. The bottom half of the barrel is pale blue and both halves join together by means of a screw thread. I've managed to over-tighten and crack the plastic moulding on several of these pens over the years so I try very hard not to do it now as once the pen is broken it's almost impossible to use again as I cannot get a grip on the barrel to write.

The barrel is significantly thicker than that on most biros, but since it contains four cartridges this is not surprising. In fact, considering it does contain four, the barrel is only perhaps twice as thick as that of many traditional single-cartridge pens.

The pen contains blue, black, red and green cartridges, and as the sliders are depressed the corresponding cartridge displaces whichever one is currently engaged with a clicking noise. Simple and effective.

USER EXPERIENCE

My user experience of this product has evolved over the years. As a younger child, I always used the blue cartridge to the point of exhaustion, and then switched to the black. I may have used the green and red for underlining or highlighting, but the pen was usually long discarded before the green and red had been used up. Many pens suffered the ignominious death of being overscrewed and broken too.

As a teen I went through the all-too-common Goth phase and used the black cartridge for all my writing. Once that was exhausted the pen was thrown away; a futile gesture relecting my moody teenage angst at a meaningless world.

As an adult all the cartridges got used up in succession as I was darned if I was going to waste money on a new pen when the old one was still perfectly serviceable, even if the green ink was a little hard to read on the shopping list sometimes.

As a teacher and tutor, I now use all four colours equally, and all for distinct purposes. The black and blue are used for general notation, the green to highlight key points on worksheets I give students and the red is used for the marking of homework.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps the perfect pen.

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Not bad for the novelty value

I reckon everyone must have owned one of these pens at some point in time as they were a real novelty and I was surprised to come across one in the pound shop recently, in fact for a £1 you actually got a pack of three so in effect I was buying 12 pens as each pen has four seperate colours in it so you get a great variety.

Each pen has a red, blue, black and green biro contained in them. The plus side of this is a nice range of colours to use however the downside is that it naturally makes the pen wider in the body and personally I find it a little uncomfortable to hold and write with for too long. Not a problem for short notes or breif messages but I would not want to write with it for a long time. The benefit of such a pen for a student I guess is the ability to have your notes in different colours and you can switch between them easily by simply depressing the correspondingly coloured top which slides down and then the relevant nib appears. My student days area thing of the past however I do find the different colours useful for making notes on scripts and either amending or highlighting something by underlining it in red.

While the variety of colour is good the quality of both the nib as a writing implement and the quality of the ink is not so great. The nibs area little scratchy and do not flow the same as a quality pen does and the colours of the ink in particular the red and the green appear a little washed out, they do not have the quality of other pens on the market.

Given the price I paid I cannot really complain and so far I have only used one of the three pens and there is a decent amount of ink for each colour although I imagine the blue will run out forst as I tend to use it more of the time. Still it is a good enough product even if the temptation is to annoy those around you with the constant clicking as you change colours.

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Bic Four colour pen

Why write with one colour when you can write with four different colours?!! Bic four colour pen is the way to do it with this fun, easy to write with biro pen.

I used to love using these pens at university, they were very helpful when it came to taking notes and writing in different colours and now I keep some around the house and they are perfect for my daughter to use when she is doing her drawing. To be honest I think she mostly loves playing with the little buttons at the top of the pen that select the colours and is always changing them so she can click them and then write in a different colour but it keeps her happy so I don't mind.

This pen from Bic like all of its pens really is good quality and nice to write with. It's made of plastic so it's never going to be a nice looking, fancy pen but it does the job and I actually really like the way it writes. It gives you a nice bold written word and I never have a problem with this pen running out of ink halfway through a letter and making your writing then look not very nice.

So the beauty of this pen is that its got four colours in one barrel and it still manages to keep the barrel as thin as a normal biro pen would be meaning its still very easy to hold and not bulky or hard to control. Inside you can see that there are 4 little ink plastic cartridges, just like you have in a regular biro but they are shorter so they all fit inside the outer barrel and to get them to work you just press down on the colour coordinated switch at the top of the pen. For example, press the red button down and the red pen comes out, press the green, get green, etc, etc. The colours inside this pen are red, blue, green and black, all the essential colours in my opinion. The tip of the pen is 1.0mm and gives a line width of 0.4mm so you get a nice written line. When you press the button of one colour the other comes down but if you want no pen point to come out you can just press the button of the colour that is up and this will make it come down again.

You can get refills for these pens which is good because I have a few with the black gone and the rest of the colours still in tact as black is the colour I use most often for proper writing so its nice to be able to just replace the black instead of having to buy a new pen every time. The pen costs a pound or two and can be bought at most stationary stores.

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Lets hope the bought one works as well as the stolen one.

...and stolen pens work twice as well. My husband stole our first one of these years ago. No he isn't a kleptomaniac, it is just habit sometimes when you have borrowed a pen to sign something to put it into your pocket, and that is what happened in this case. He gave this to the children who enjoyed it for awhile, but more often than not left it in the crayon box, and eventually I appropriated for myself as I am forever having my pens go dead on me. The children wanted it more for colouring, and I really don't think colouring in is this pen's strong suit. Markers or crayons are much more efficient. After 3 -4 years though, the original one of these has died and I have recently replaced it. I've never had a pen last so long - even if in effect this is really four pens combined so when the last colour finally dried up, I bought a new one.

I keep a written journal of my sons work and progress in home education. I tried keeping it as a computer file for awhile - and erased it - so I've decided paper and ink is more reliable. I don't think I am actually required to keep this, but the school board does find it handy to get an idea what he is working on and I find it quite useful to look back over what we have been working on, areas I felt we would need to revisit etc... In addition to being very useful for record keeping - it's great having a pen near the phone that always works. And of course if one colour should dry up just when you have an important number to take down, you can just switch colours.

In all honesty, I don't really need the 4 colour feature. The kids have fun with this now and then, and being able to change colours can make writing more fun. It can even come in handy for certain exercises such as asking my son to write all the adverbs in a sentence a different colour, but over all, the colour changing feature it's just a novelty. It is very easy to use though and even with problems with my hands I have no problem switching colours.

As an added bonus, both my son and I find the shape of this pen quite easy to use and comfortable to hold. Whether you need the colour change feature or not, I would strongly recommend this pen, just as a good reliable ink pen. I paid £2.49 for mine, new and delivered from ebay. Amazon sells this for £2.41 but only as an add item to a total order of £10 or more. In addition to the traditional blue, red, green, and black this is also available in "fashion colours" pink, purple, turqouise and green, but I have only used the original colours.

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Go for it.

At work, I regularly have to switch between different coloured pens for writing in notes, writing on my to do list and in other places. Therefore I was after a 4 way coloured pen for a while but they were in the region of £4 which I was too tight to pay. My boyfriend and I were in Sainsbury's one day so I decided to go and see what their stationary selection was like. They were selling the Bic 4-colour ball point pen for just £1.90. I don't know if it was on offer, but didn't appear to be at the time. As it was more than half the price of all the other pens I had previously seen, I bought one.

The 4-colour pen contains a blue pen, a black pen, a red pen and a green pen. It has a 1.0mm tip, which is regarded as a medium tip. The 1.0mm tip produces a line of 0.3mm which again, is standard line size. The great thing about this pen, is that it is refillable, so you can get the refills for it from many different shops. You can either buy single refills or boxes of large quantities such as 50.

To use the pen, you choose which colour you want to write with and press down on the coloured 'hook' associated with it. To retract the nib, you simply press down on the 'hook' again. The cartridges are shorter than normal biros, presumably to house the selection feature at the end of the pen, therefore the pens run out slightly quicker than normal Biro's, but as you can buy refills for a reasonable price, this isn't really an issue to me.

The pen is very comfortable to hold and to write with. It creates smooth effortless writing. Due to housing 4 different coloured pens inside, the pen is wider than normal Biros to use but it is still comfortable. Although as I am used to smaller pens, if I was to write for a long period of time with this pen, I might get cramp in my fingers, which is the only downside of this product that I can think of.

Overall, this is a great pen, I got it for a decent price, and it is great if you have a job where you have to switch between different coloured pens regularly.

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4 stars

I love a good biro. This one I am giving 4 stars as it is okay but not amazing.

I bought it for £4 about 6 months ago which I think is a reasonable price to pay as you technically get four pens in one.

This pen has 4 nibs inside it; blue, green, red and black. The blue isn't quite as dark as a normal biro blue in my opinion it is slightly lighter. You select which nib you want by pushing down the colour which is at the top of the pen. To then retract the nib you just push the colour in and it zaps back inside.

I like how you can have these four colours in one. When writing I like to use different colours for various things so it saves me having to put a pen down then reach for another, it keeps them altogether in a really practical way which can save time.

The only thing I don't like about it is that the nibs are a little scratchy. They are not as smooth as some biros and sometimes the scratchy sensation goes through me a little bit! I have also found that the ink doesn't last all that long as you don't get as long a cartridge so you may find it runs out faster than you anticipate.

I like this pen it's very comfortable to hold as it's rounded and it's not too wide so it's comfortable to write with and hold for a while. I find it really useful and practical and my grandchildren find it really magical too with various colours inside one pen!

So it gets 4 stars, I'm knocking one off for it not lasting as long and being quite scratchy when writing sometimes.

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A good pen for the price

Having gone back to university I seem to have started a collection of pens, and I have a few of these in my stationary drawers... (The standard version)...

There are two versions of this pen: 'standard' green, red, black and blue,'fashion' ocean blue, girly pink, deep violet and acid green

I personally will be reviewing the standard version, although I imagine the pen is put together in the same fashion for both versions. The pen is a little thinner than the diameter of a 5 pence piece, due to the fact that it had four colours of ink inside. the pen is round, and has a 'clip' on it to ensure it doesn't roll off the desk.

Like most retractable pens you have to depress a piece of plastic at the top of the pen to 'select a colour'. In order to 'unselect' a colour you can begin to depress another colour. It really is an ingenious design. The pen does unscrew, and on my pen both half's of the barrel are white plastic (It advertises a company - however in shops these seem to half white half blue)... Having had a quick scan you can apparently replace the ink cartridges - (to be honest I'm not sure that would be financially worth it though)...

The pen is nice and smooth to write with, it does however have the Bic biro issue of occasional 'blobs' of ink. The pen has been going strong for quite some time, and the ink inside seems to be running out at different rates (to be expected I suppose I do favour blue ink)... The rounded shape is comfortable to hold, although it may be considered to be a little 'wide' by others. It does the job well, although I wouldn't recommend it for highly intricate work, or writing invitations that need to be incredibly neat.

Personally I do recommend this, and I am off to see if I can find one in the fashion colours to add to my ever growing collection of pens...

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A nice writer

I would have to say that this is one of my favourite pens, ever since being in secondary school I have loved writing in different colours and I love to make notes too so this pen is a firm favourite.

I was given this pen by my Mam one birthday or Christmas so I am not sure where she bought it however being a Bic pen it will be widely available and I have looked on the internet to give you an idea and you can buy this from Amazon for £2.50 which is quite high for a pen but when you consider it is a decent make and actually 4 pens it's a bit more cost effective.

The pen comes in very simple packaging with a plastic cover over the front of the pen and the plastic is attached to a cardboard backing with a simple hole at the top for shop display.

The pen is a standard length, the bottom half is made of blue plastic and then the top half is made of white plastic, the top half of the pen has four small plastic sliders around it in red, blue, black and green to select your pen colour.

To work the pen you have to push down the slider of your chosen colour and then the pen nib will appear, the pen is wider than a usual pen as there are obviously 4 different pens centres inside the pen. To release the pen when you have finished you have to push on one of the other coloured sliders but only until you hear a click and then release and the nib will retreat back into the pen.

The pen is comfortable to hold and I feel that the pen writes nicely with no scratchy feelings. The pen is really useful for me making lists using a different colour for different things I need to remember. The only drawback of the pen is that the inks don't all run out at once so I have now ended up with a pen with only red and green working. I haven't bought another of these pens as I came across a Hello Kitty version with 10 different inks in it so I am in my element with that one!

This is a great pen, easy to use, a decent price and writes nicely so 5 stars from me.

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Pleasing purchase but not for everyday

As a teacher, I love having one of these pens at hand. I have different colours in my register according to whether they are late etc and so switching between colours within one pen makes this process more convenient.

However, as a pen to write any length of text in, I wouldn't rate it. It is too fat for me to hold comfortably for any length of time and my writing can be quite messy in it. Also, if you're mainly using it for one colour, this is an expensive solution and will mean you are soon left with a pen containing ink for 3 colours you don't tend to use.

Also, a small warning. This is probably just me but I have hurt my lip on it before! I often put pens near or in my mouth (I know I shouldn't but there you go). In the past I have accidently pressed down on another colour while it was near my mouth, causing the colour that was in action to pop up and trap my lip! I was in a meeting at the time so had to control myself but it was very painful. I accept this is information of limited use to most people but may be worth considering if you're a pen chewer!

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Great writers with a variety of uses

Living in a house with 3 children, I am always hunting high and low for pens! Its like magic, one minute they are there, the next they are gone! So recently, I noticed a bag of various Bic pens in Poundland for...you guessed it, a pound, and decided I would buy them and keep them as my hidden stash! Two of the best pens in the packet were the 4 colour pens.

I always remember being in high school when I think of these pens, I had one and it was my favourite pen out of a massive variety my pencil case held, mainly because of the convenience of it.

Slightly chunkier than a bog standard Bic biro, these pens are different because they hold four different colours in one pen. The bottom half of these tend to be either blue (my high school pen!) or pink (my new ones). They may be available in other colours but I havent seen them. The top half of the pen is white, and at the end, going around the pen, are four different coloured 'switches'. The most popular of these pens tends to have blue, black, green and red. To choose one of the colours, you just slide the switch down, and it will click into place. To put the nib away, you can lightly push down one of the switches and the nip will pop back inside the pen, preventing the ink from drying out.

These pens were always convenient for school work, as some teachers preferred blue/black ink, and then we could use the green and red for underlining, or any corrections etc on our work. I am sure they would be just as handy in an office, too.

My newest pen is a slightly funkier version. Instead of the black/blue/green/red combination, I have two nibs of pink ink, and two of a sky blue colour. While these would probably not be great for school or an office, they are good enough for me for notes around the house and the endless supply of permission slips for the kids school I have to fill out!

I always find these pens to be great writers, the ink runs smoothly and there is never any blotting. I do remember my sister owning one of these and her black never was smooth, it would be blotchy and kind of scratchy to write with, so either I have been lucky or she got a bad pen! Another bonus with these is you can easily check to see if your ink is running low. They screw apart in the middle, making it simple to see the cartridges inside.

As I said at the beginning of my review, I managed to get my latest pen in a mixed bag with other Bic pens from Poundland for just £1. A quick look on Amazon shows you can pick up the black/blue combi pen for as little as £1.34, which I think is a great price for this nifty little pen, as really you are paying for four!

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Wouldn't but this again

==Overview==

The BIC 4 colour pen has been around for a long time and I remember having one as a child and thinking it was absolutely brilliant as "in the olden days" pens only had one colour, not four! However, more recently I decided to buy myself a new one which cost about £2 from Ryman's stationers. The pen is quite chunky, more chunky than a standard BIC biro because of the 4 colours that it houses. At the top of the pen there are 4 colours: red, blue, green and black. You click one of the colours down and at the end of the barrel of the pen you get that colour biro. I thought it would be a useful addition to my marking repertoire as I have to mark students work in one colour (red), moderate in another colour (green) and write comments in another colour (blue or black) so the pen suited me perfectly and it was only one pen to lose instead of 3 or 4 pens. It also takes up less space in my bag than 3 or 4 pens.

==My Opinion==

Whilst I think that the idea behind the pen is good, I wouldn't buy another one. First of all, I don't like the chunky barrel of the pen and find it harder to write with than a standard Bic biro. Also, although the colours click down the Bic biro does not write in the same way as a standard Bic pen (which I think are absolutely lovely writers) and I find that sometimes the ink doesn't flow as nicely as it should or does in the standard pens. This confuses me somewhat as they are obviously the same ink and the same nibs made by the same company. The difference perhaps is the lack of grip around the nib which is what I really love about the standard Bic pens. The chunky design really does put me off but then I really am a fan of skinny pens so I should have known this before I bought one. They also don't have a lid to chew on which sounds absolutely terrible and vile but chewing a pen lid helps me to think when I'm writing so this is probably not a downside for everyone but is for me! However, equally on the upside there is no lid to lose! They are not bad value considering you get four colours.

==Overall==

My impression of the pen isn't a positive one and as I said, I wouldn't buy another one mainly because I didn't like the chunky design nor the way it writes on paper (less worried about the chewy pen lid ;) ). The value is pretty good but it just isn't for me. Judging by other reviews though, other people like it so don't let me particularly sway you, I think pen choice is very personal (same with paper), some people love a chunky pen but unfortunately not me. Just one star here I'm afraid.

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Love these pens!

This is a review of the Bic 4 Colour Ballpoint Pen which has played a major role in my life so far. I first used these pens when I was a student, finding the choice of colours useful for underlining (and doodling) but I carried on using them at work too knowing that if one ran out I could click on to another colour.

DescriptionThe pen is quite slimline considering it contains four colours: red, blue, green and black. It is blue on the body with a white top and click down bits for the colours. It has round end and can be clicked off all four colours if you want to carry it in your bag. You can only use one colour at a time but beware borrowing others' in case they have changed the inks round to trick you!

My thoughtsI find these easy to write with and complimentary to my handwriting. In my line of business, I often have to proof read others' work on hard copy and so an alternative colour like green or red helps my comments to stand out from the page. I always seem to use up the black ink first and then the blue at which point the pen becomes less useful unless you don't mind writing in red. I recently got a slimline 'fun' version of this pen in a pack of pens that is pink bodied and offers a pink and blue in it which is nice for home but not very professional to be seen with in the work place I suppose.

Price I usually buy my four colour Bic pens from the supermarket for around £1.50 to £2 each. Sadly they are not available from the work supplies department although I wish they were. I always keep a couple of spare ones in my office drawer as they are something I don't like to be without.

Final wordI will use these pens for as long as Bic care to make them. In my mind they are a classic and came in really handy when I was doing my Masters degree a couple of years ago, returning to university and being ready to take copious notes armed with four colours was helpful!

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essential for marking work

In my day job I spend quite a bit of time reading students' work, correcting their errors and trying to add helpful comments to the writing they produce. I'm supplied bic crystal pens by my employer but my preferred weapon is the bic 4 colour pen which is a much better pen all together. At the moment they are £2.24 for 3 in Staples so I have stocked up, you can normally expect to pay £1-2. It's a 15cm big pen with 4 different colour nibs - it's low on glamour but high on practicality.

The Bic four colour pen comes in 2 colourways, a traditional blue, red, green and black but also a more contemporary purple, pink, pale blue and light green. I like to ring the changes between the two - luckily for me I don't work in a school where there's a particular ban on using whatever colour you like - (apparently in some establishments the use of red is frowned upon as being too negative), and there is a big emphasis on correct spelling and writing in my place of work. It would seem inappropriate to choose a pen to write things such as "present your work neatly please" that weren't up to writing neatly - I find this pen with its interchangeable 1.0mm point is more than up to the job. It's handy to be able to change between colours with the press of a the coloured button at the top of the pen, and I find the ink always flows well and it's fairly comfortable to grip. This is not a luxury pen by any stretch of the imagination but it's a very practical item and well built - I have a terrible habit of breaking bits of pens by fiddling, but these pens are pretty resistant to that and literally last through hours of marking. With a flick of the top I can change colour to correct work or make add marks to my records - far more practical than trying to work with one pen. My writing is, I'd like to say, actually pretty neat with this pen, not up to fountain pen levels but hopefully clear to read.

I think these pens should be supplied in copious amounts and freely to everyone working in education as I find them essential in my job but I'd have to say they are handy in the home too. The bic itself may have been invented in the 1950's, but this exact model is apparently a mere 40 years old. It's certainly a pen that is looking good for its age, recommended and 10/10 and a smiley face from me.

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A good writing implement that delivers variety

I have a lot of uses for coloured pens. As a teacher I use them for marking jotters in class and homework. I use a Filofax as a planner and like to be able to see at a glance what an entry is for. I also have a daughter who can be kept happy with a pen and paper if we have to hang about. In the past I used to carry a number of pens about, which I was always losing.

The bic four colour pen meets all of these needs.

Product.The pen has 4 bic writing inks contained within one pen. There are two choices available, the traditional red, blue black and green and the more fashion option of light blue, purple, pink and light green. I use the second option as for my uses the other colours are a bit dull. The pen casing for the fashion option comes in either pink or purple. While quite girlie colour wise, they are both easily to find if like me you leave your pens lying about.

The pen itself is relatively chunky but not so much that it interferes with your writing skills. To select a colour, there are 4 push down parts at the top of the pens, one for each colour. You just push down the one you want. You can also select no colour by pushing one half down and then releasing. This would avoid the pen marking your bag.

UsabilityI find the pen very easy to write with. My handwriting it not neat and I would normally avoid a biro pen for this reason. However the fashion colours flow nicely and I find my handwriting is always legible and my hand does not suffer in extended writing.

The pens all seem to last well but I couldn't give an exact timing as I have a few on the go. The ink is very clear on white and cream paper but due to the lightness of the colours, does not work well on darker coloured paper. I have seen no evidence of any ink fading and have been using the pens for well over a year. Also as they are biro pens, there is not leakage of ink through a page.

The pen looks good and the fashion option is packaged well. It would make a nice pencil case gift.

OverallA good functional pen that brings choice and fun to your writing tasks without compromising on the writing quality.

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Recommended.

I'm a nurse and as a nurse when I'm marking observations on charts I have to use a variety of ink colours to mark different variables. I have to use black, red, green and blue ink in order to mark the observations correctly and clearly. Rather than having to carry around four different colour pens, I tend to use a Bic 4 Colour Ballpoint Pen which has the four colours (black, red, green and blue) that I need.

This pen is essentially a basic ballpoint pen where you can choose between the four ink colours. There are four small levers at the top of the pen that are coloured to correspond to the colour ink that you want to use. As you push the lever down, the appropriate nib with the ink you want is pushed down so that only that nib is available to use at that time. When you're finished using that colour you either half press another of the coloured levers down so that the other nib springs back up out of site, or you push down another lever completely for another nib and ink to be pulled down into place in order to be used. The nib is a traditional ball point pen that is fine to write with and the ink does not smudge. However, although the pen is relatively comfortable to use, he barrel is slightly wider than most other Bic pens.

I usually buy this pen in a pack of 4 from Amazon for £4.99 - which I think is a good price because it essentially gives me 16 coloured biros for this price.

There is a small clip on the side of the pen so that I am able to clip it onto my uniform - and this makes it accessible to me at all times when I'm at work.

The only negative thing I can say about this pen is the fact that one ink always runs out before the other inks (usually the black ink) and so that means that I usually throw the pen away and start a new one. I wish there was a way of replacing individual ink nibs when it has run out so that I can continue using the rest of the pen.

Overall, I recommend this pen for anyone who needs to use a multi-coloured biro in the course of their work.